Germany toughened rules Tuesday for asylum seekers from the Balkans as Europe struggled to cope with a record surge in migrants, with new figures showing more than half a million have crossed the Mediterranean so far this year.

The Libyan coast guard too reported that it rescued 346 migrants Tuesday, almost 100 of them women and children, found adrift on rubber boats off the country's coast.

With between 8,000 and 10,000 migrants arriving daily in Europe's biggest economy in the past four days, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said economic migrants who have no chance of obtaining asylum in Germany have to be told early and rapidly repatriated.

In the first six months of 2015, about 40 percent of asylum-seekers in Germany came from the Balkans, even though their chances of getting asylum was less than one percent.

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